Nekrologer/Obituaries

A life of contradiction and clarity. By Barry Eidlin (Jacobin, 9 February, 2019). “Erik Olin Wright understood the necessity of clearly articulating what’s wrong with society, what a better society could look like, and how we could get there.”

A great heart stopped: Erik Olin Wright (1947-2019). By Masoud Movahed (The Progressive, January 31, 2019). “Wright leaves a legacy of brilliant leftist thought, as well as compassion and kindness.”

Class was the key for Erik Olin Wright. By Alex Callinicos (Socialist Worker, Issue 2639, 29 January 2019). “Class indeed was the main theme of Erik’s intellectual career … He sought to marry Marx’s theory of classes to the empirical and quantitative methods of the mainstream social sciences. Usually Marx disappears in such attempts, but not so in Erik’s case.”

A beautiful human link. By Elizabeth Wrigley-Field (Jacobin, 29 January 2019). “When it was unfashionable to talk about capitalism, Erik Olin Wright taught generations of students to think about how class actually works — and was curious, enthusiastic, and endlessly generous while doing it.”

Erik Olin Wright and us. By Keith Mann (Solidarity, January 28, 2019). “His voluminous research and publications on social class and engagement with Marxism made him one of the most prominent intellectuals associated with Marxism in the US in recent times.”

A real utopian in practice and theory. By Michael Burawoy (Jacobin, 28 January, 2019). “The characteristics of the middle class, sociology as a discipline, the uses of ‘utopia’, strategies for ending capitalism, the lives of students and colleagues — Erik Olin Wright transformed all of them and more.”

A model for us all. By David Calnitsky (Jacobin, 24 January 2019). “The eminent Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright was serious about understanding and changing the world — and was generous, curious, and kind while doing it.”

Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019). By Vivek Chibber (Jacobin, 24 January 2019). “Erik Olin Wright was radicalized in the 1960s and remained a Marxist because his moral compass simply wouldn’t allow him to drift away. With his death, the Left has lost one of its most brilliant intellectuals.”

Remembering Erik Olin Wright. By Adam Szetela (Dissent Magazine, January 23, 2019). “Wright will be remembered as an iconic thinker who embodied the socialist vision that he worked so hard to bring forth.”

Erik Olin Wright 1947-2019 – The person, the friend. By Harry Brighouse (Europe Solidaire Sans Frontiers, 23 January 2019). “I’m sorry to report that Erik Olin Wright has died. He was diagnosed with an acute form of leukemia last spring, and, after various interventions, has been in decline for the past few weeks. He spent his last weeks mainly in the hospital, surrounded by his family, and plentiful visits from numerous friends and former students, socializing to the end.”

Links:

A class act: Erik Olin Wright in perspective. By Joseph Choonara (International Socialism, Issue 154, Spring 2017, p.101-128). Review of Erik Olin Wright, Understanding Class (Verso, 2015, 272 p.): “Rather than discussing in detail the contents of this wide-ranging selection of essays, I want instead to take the opportunity to appraise some of Wright’s wider contributions to theorising class that inform the pieces in this collection.”

How to be an anticapitalist today. By Erik Olin Wright (Jacobin, 12 February 2015). “Anticapitalism isn’t simply a moral stance against injustice — it’s about building an alternative.”

Nekrologer/Obituaries:

Colin Barker obituary. By Gareth Dale (The Guardian, 14 February 2019). “My friend Colin was an academic, Marxist intellectual and activist. A creative thinker who delighted in questioning received orthodoxies, he published a series of books on social movement theory and popular democratic uprisings, including Revolutionary Rehearsals (1987) and Festival of the Oppressed: Solidarity, Reform and Revolution in Poland, 1980-81 (1995).”

Obituary: Colin Barker (RS21: Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, 9 February 2019). Ian Birchall remembers the life of revolutionary socialist Colin Barker: “His contribution in many different fields was enormous, and one short article cannot cover it all. What follows is simply an attempt to recall parts of Colin’s life and how it impinged on my own and on the movement we were both committed to.”

A teacher and student of revolution. By Phil Gasper (SocialistWorker.org, February 8, 2019). “Colin was one of a kind. He was a brilliant and original academic who also remained an active revolutionary socialist for almost his entire adult life. And as tributes flooded in after his death, people repeatedly referred to his kindness and generosity.”

Colin Barker – a Marxist committed to socialism from below. By Alex Callinicos (Socialist Worker, Issue 2641, 6 February 2019). “For me, as for many revolutionary socialists in Manchester, Colin was a political older brother, the comrade who helped with difficult questions, who advised on tricky problems, knew the theory, Marx’s Capital, all three volumes, and much else.”

Colin Barker (1939-2019) (RS21: Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, 4 February 2019). “Today we republish the first section of Colin Wilson’s interview with Colin Barker (August 2015), where he reflected on what his experiences in the International Socialists (IS) in the 1960 …”